


Over The Rainbow

by shadow_in_the_shade



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: Angst, Explicit Language, Fluff, Homophobic Language, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Sexuality Crisis, gene has issues and we all know it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2018-12-30 05:47:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12102081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadow_in_the_shade/pseuds/shadow_in_the_shade
Summary: A series of mostly short one - or two shots, based on tumblr prompts, all Sam/ Gene, some explicit.





	1. What The Hell Were You Thinking?

_What the hell were you thinking?_

 

Drink seems like a good idea tonight. He almost laughs to think about it. In 2006 it would be enforced therapy for all after a day like today but here – therapy means Nelson and the pub and a very large quantity of alcohol while they slap each other’s backs on a villain well caught, an adventure Ray even calls it. Well Ray never got taken hostage.

But he sits just off to the side watching the others, smiling because he _is_ happy, happy to be alive, happy that they all made it, feeling as he so usually feels a part of all this and not; _within and without_ he thinks _who was that – Fitzgerald?_ The fact that he would think it is enough to remind him how little he can really belong here. He sits and thinks and tries to process the day from start to finish like he has trained himself to do but it keeps coming back to two things – one _I saw you die, I saw you die – I didn’t not really but for a moment there I saw you die and I felt – I felt – I felt all the things I’d feel if it had been real, fatal, shit._ Then he thinks about nearly dying, he thinks about saying goodbye to Annie and somehow that’s alright, he can live with that. And then he thinks about turning to Gene – and in the stories don’t they save the most important to last? Didn’t Dorothy turn to the scarecrow last _I think I’ll miss you most of all?_ Friends fast, lovers last? _Shit,_ again _shit._ Except he couldn’t say it could he? Whatever he had wanted to say had dried up and he could not say goodbye to Gene, struggling to work out what the hell this means – the very act of struggle is hijacked by what happened next _When you’re done with him you better turn on me quick._

Not just the words but Gene’s voice when he said it. Would it have been the same for any member of his team? The threat, the intent to kill the person who killed one of his people? He wished he knew what he had been thinking, feeling at the time. But it is hard enough to work out his thoughts.

 

“Whassamatter Sammy boy?” Gene hurls himself into the chair next to him, sending his scooting a few inches across the floor, throwing a loose heavy arm around his shoulders. He’s had more to drink than Sam (of course) and Sam’s been trying to think about that too – I mean the number of hip flasks that man carries – in a way it’s funny and today thank god for it but the more he thinks about it the more it isn’t funny at all. And another thing that’s been bothering him –

“You know your problem Dorothy?”

He wishes he did, but raises an eyebrow –

“The eternal stick up my arse?”

“Well yeah” Gene snorts – That too. But you. You think too much you know that. We did good today. You should get over it – take the stick out just for once.”

_I saw you die I saw you die I saw you die and wat did you mean by what you said and that face and those eyes?_

Words choke in his throat.

“Alright Samantha spill it. C’mon. Penny for them.”

_Jesus._

“I can’t”

“Oh don’t be such a girl. C’mon, let it out.”

“Did it not occur to you guv that it might be even more girly to start talking about my feelings?”

Gene swears. Pushes his pint glass across the table half full, rises.

“Get your coat” he says and there’s a moment where Sam could swear he might add _you’ve pulled_ but thinks better of it. He gets up, follows Gene out, it’s late, he notices, the place is emptying anyway, Ray and Phyllis pulling Chris prostrate out the back door by the ankles, laughing, dropping him repeatedly, Ray occasionally slurring that he’s not that drunk. He catches up to gene who has started walking already and for a moment they walk in silence. Eventually Gene breaks it as Sam was relying on him to do.

“Can’t you ever just let it go?”

“It’s been one hell of a day.” He pauses “I nearly got shot”. He hopes for a moment that will suffice as explanation for his mood. It doesn’t. He did not really hope it.

“Bloody boo hoo Gladys, I _got_ shot.”

He winces. As if he could forget.

“Oh yeah” he says instead “Fatally. In the hip flask. I saw.”

“Well I didn’t see you. Couldn’t see your face Sam but I heard your voice, you sure as hell gave a fuck at the time.”

“Yeah” Sam says shortly because he knows if he gives it more he won’t stop and it will all come out “Yeah I gave a fuck at the time.” They walk another beat in frosty silence and he knows he has to stop dancing at some point so he stops –

“Well what about you? _When you’re done with him you better turn on me?_ The fuck was that?”

“You tell me mister I’m – so - clever.”

Sam stops, grabs Gene by the lapels, angry enough to be able to yank him to face him and there it is, the same lost look in Gene’s eyes that he glimpsed there twice today –

“ _I saw you die!”_ he hisses and he knows he’s tearing up but cannot stop it, he never can – “I saw you die and I felt it like I was the one who got shot and I didn’t know how I could go on in this place- in the fucking world without you okay? Now tell me what the hell were you thinking?”

Because fuck it, he said it and it was like ripping all his clothes off in the street and if he has to be naked Gene has to be too. Gene swipes Sam’s hands viciously away from his coat but only so he can turn it, grabbing Sam by the collar instead.

“What makes you think I wouldn’t have said the same no matter who on my team had a gun pointed at their head?”

Sam nods, he had thought that –

“I had thought that” he said “But that’s not all is it?”

Gene shakes him but on the verge of letting go in disgust he keeps hold of him.

“What do you want to hear? That I was thinking if he shot you I’d feel it? That if you were gone you’d take the colour out the world with you? That I couldn’t – as you so eloquently put it go on in this fucking world without you? Is that what you wanted to hear?”

Like knocking the breath out of him, he never wanted to hear Gene’s voice so broken.

“No, that’s not what I wanted to hear.” He says, honestly on the one hand, lying on the other.

“Yeah well tough”

“Let go of me”

He lowers him but does not let go, half grabbing, half leaning into him, dropping his head as though in an agony of shame and resting his forehead against Sam’s.

“Almost lost you today” he says, roughly “No I’m not letting you go.”

Gene closes his eyes, for a moment tight shut and Sam remembers feeling like if he said too much he’d have to say everything. It never occurred to him that he and Gene could have a thought in common.

“What do I do Sammy?” Gene almost whispers it, shivers of broken glass in his voice – “What the hell do I do now?”

He can only think of one thing to say and he should not say it. But he does.

“Love me” he says “Gene if you love me, love me.”

He can feel Gene’s throat as he swallows hard.

“It’s not that easy Sammy.”

_____x_______

 

The next part is for the prompt "It's Not That Easy" but follows straight on from this one. :-)


	2. It's Not That Easy

_“It’s not that easy Sammy”_

“Why?”

“Don’t give up do you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You can’t just – you have to push and push until you break your things or lose them”

Sometimes Sam wishes he wasn’t so darned empathic – he can almost feel Gene’s chest hurting with it.

“I didn’t lose you” something that has been eating at him all evening loosens when he says this, though it does not help Gene.

“No” he agrees “But I’m lost all the same”

It occurs to him that Gene did not argue when he said that he loved him and for Gene that’s acquiescence. He still doesn’t see what’s so difficult, he’s as good as admitted himself now that it goes both ways.

“Doesn’t have to be like this” he says.

“Doesn’t it? Don’t know if you’ve noticed Sam luv but yer a bloke” In the worst argument for his own heterosexuality Sam has ever heard from Gene he grabs Sam’s dick to prove it. He’s hard. So is Gene, he can feel it. Just at the moment it feels somewhat incidental.

“Gene –” Sam sighs, knowing it’s time to break the ultimate _we never talk about this –_ “We’ve been fucking for weeks now.”

“Yeah but this isn’t just fucking is it? I dunno what the fuck this is.”

“Yeah. Yeah you do.”

“Shut up. I don’t – I’m not – that’s _gay.”_

“Gene I’ve been at least half gay my whole life –”

“Fuckin happy for you”

“- it’s really not as bad as all that.”

“Yeah well tell that to my old man.”

He remembers their conversation of this afternoon, him and Annie sharing their happiest memories, Gene having nothing to share – what Gene said –

Oh.

Suddenly it all makes sense. He wonders how he can have been so dense.

“You said you didn’t like to remember the past”

“Yeah, so?”

“So _don’t_ – think about the future instead.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m in it.”

Gene’s lip twitches and Sam can feel him poised on the brink of saying something rude but instead he kisses him. Unexpected though it is it’s also not, everything is and it isn’t all at once these days. It should have been more of a surprise but feels so much like water in the desert that he takes it with ravenous thirst. It’s not the first time they’ve kissed but it also is, because he can feel more than just lust in the press against him, he can feel the more than physical need, a kind of pain in Gene’s chest that heals with kissing him and yet intensifies. There is so much in it that speaks the words Gene cannot say, that they will some day still need to say but for no this will do, angry and needy and tender all at once, Gene’s hands on him, moving hard, grabbing at the life of him, as he scrabbles back, his own hands clawing for purchase to hand onto his one rock in this reality and to keep it safe at the same time. He never expected to feel protective of Gene. He wonders if Gene will ever admit to starting this kiss or if this and everything to come will be the new thing they do not talk about it in the days to come. Gene breaks away, eyes wild, black, fierce, frightened.

“The fuck did you do?” he growls, quietly “I was doing _fine_ until you showed up. Walk”

He pushes Sam just a little ahead of him before catching up.

“Where are we going?”

“Mine. Cause if I can’t take this your pathetic excuse for a bed sure as hell can’t take it either.”

“So what? I just showed up and you loved me?”

“Christ on a bike will you _stop_ saying that?”

“I will when you deny it.”

“I’m not a liar.”

Five fraught minutes later he pushes Sam ahead of him through the door, marches him up the stairs like a criminal.

“Yeah” he says, face close to Sam’s, hands working hard and fast at the front of his shirt “Yeah alright. Fine. You showed up like a bloody plague to my life shooting your gob off and I loved you alright? I never fell so hard in my life and I look at you and don’t know if I’ll ever get up again, you ruin _everything –”_

“I’d hardly call decades of repression and nice safe homophobia _everything”_

“Sam will you please for the last bloody time shut the fuck up?”

It becomes Sam’s turn to swallow hard, aware very suddenly that they’ve never really been naked before and he has not felt more so in his life and Gene looking at him as though he could eat him and he _can’t_ shut up no, working Gene’s shirt as he talks the words, falling out of him fast to cover up for the intimacy of it all.

“I didn’t want to love you either you know. You were just some brute my brain made up, something to fight against, not with, you were there to be the villain in this daydream weren’t you? Not the bloody love interest and I don’t know how that all went wrong but I don’t hate it, and I wanted to hate it, you’re an arsehole.”

Gene, undressed, pushes Sam down on the bed as though it’s a fight, but he’s never pinned him down with them both undressed before and something raw in Sam’s soul feels as though it is being bandaged by the skin to skin contact and he meets that look in Gene’s eye with more fear than he has ever felt before.

“Fuck off” Gene retorts, incongruous as it is with the slide of his body against Sam’s, the heat of their skin together, that feeling Sam has only read about before of not knowing where you begin and the other person ends – well that’s been coming on mentally for a while now, it’s time they put it into action. Gene’s still talking as his hands roam Sam’s body and it helps, lest the fear become too much – “I wanted to hate you too. You’ve been a pain in my arse from day one with your sodding attitude and your uptight picky ways, you’re a precious jumped up little prick and several slices short of a –”

“Love me” so much shaking, shivering, need and desperation in Gene’s hands and marking his skin and he arches himself upwards for Gene to fuck him, petrified because he can look him in the eye this time when he does – “:just love me” and Gene pushing into him hard because there is nothing else they could possibly do.

“I do” he groans “Fuck you I do.”

Impossible to say more, to hide behind another word like a brick between this, feeling and feeling and feeling, every thrust every stroke, hard palms and gentle fingertips on his skin and the gentleness breaks him and the rough strokes fix him a dozen times over and he’s clinging, arms about Gene’s neck, fingers digging into his back because hurt makes him hammer in harder and it’s still incidental really, all the physical is just background to the way their eyes have locked a thousand truths spilling out that were never unlocked before, fucking because they have to, because of the tight clenching lust that pulls them together at the hips, that has been dragging them together from the start and they were both fighting so hard, first against its very existence and then fighting to believe this was all that it was. Because they’re never going to settle down, never going to get married or share this with the world, never even hold hands in public not here, not now, no until they’re both in their seventies and back in 2006, but none of that can matter enough to stop this from happening and all they can do is feel the delight of coming together of pleasure after pain and feeling so completely that the other is alive, that they did not die today and if death has an opposite this is it. He bites Gene’s shoulder to keep from screaming and Gene is swearing and then all but screaming and he cries out anyway, the world kaleidoscopic behind his eyes, flooding technicolor as everything gets real and it’s a rush of joy that leaves everything else behind.

Afterwards, they’re lying, holding hands, not talking about it but incapable of not touching breathing, cooling, everything thrumming gently.

“You said –” Sam says slowly.

“Fucking hell Gladys do you have to?”

“Do I have to _what_ guv?”

“I swear to god if you wanna start talking about your feelings –”

“You’ll what? Tell me more of yours?”

“Think you could handle it?”

“Shut up.” No, no he’s not sure he could. Anyway – “Before when we were in the cupboard and talking about happy memories –”

Gene swears softly but lets him continue.

“You might have implied that you didn’t have any”

“I might have”

“Really?” he turns his head on the pillow, Gene turns with him; he has noticed how they do this, mirror each other. It’s like looking in a mirror but knowing, even liking who he can see there – “Not one?”

It hurts him, worse than he thought it might.

“Yeah well. Maybe I was waiting for the best one.”

“What do you mean?”

“Right now’s not bad”

“Right now’s not a memory yet.”

“Right. So how’s about you shut up and help us make it a longer one?”

“Yeah” Sam grins, it feels enormous – “Alright.”

__x__

 

 

  


  


 

 

 

 


	3. You’ve always felt like home

_You’ve always felt like home_

“Where the bloody hell do you think you’re going?”

“Home”

“The bloody hell you are”

Oh. Of course. Of course he gets yanked back through the door before he can even storm out of it, hauled back by the scruff of the neck as though he’s some kind of misbehaved cat, fairly sure Gene’s pinching skin this time not just leather. He thankfully manages not to yelp, eyes rolling as he is pulled back and the door kicked shut – _oh joy. Here we go again._

“Put me down” He restrains the urge to actually stamp his foot for the frustration – though to be honest the pinch to the back of his neck is helping somewhat in a strange, painful sort of way. Knowing that Gene’s now mad – yeah that helps too, far more than it probably should. He suddenly understands why someone actually _would_ stamp their foot – it didn’t sound real to him before, like something someone would never actually do outside of small girls in story books. But he can see himself doing it now and just as clearly hear Gene calling him a fairy- boy nancy girl for it. _Great_ he thinks, _oh that is bloody brilliant I’ve internalized the bastard._

“I’ll put you down when I’m done with you you useless sodding pansy but I am not letting you walk out on me mid case”

“ _Fuck_ the case” he spits “There wouldn’t be a bloody case any more if you’d just let me take charge when I said I would –” Gene is already swearing at him for this but he carries on regardless “If you’d just followed my lead for once in your thick headed life we’d be wrapped up with this and down the pub trading racism for misogyny as per every night”

“Misogy-what? Oh never mind I don’t actually give a fuck. Now sit down.”

He actually hears himself laugh shortly, antagonistically – “-no”

“What”

“I said – _no.”_

“Okay” Gene sits back heavily arms folded smugly across his chest, fingers laced – “Assuming for a moment I’m going to let that happen – what do you actually think you’ll achieve lying in your shitty little bed in your shitty little flat  staring up at the ceiling with your dick out?”

“O-kaaay. First of all – leave my dick out of it. Second of all - I’m going _home -_ not back to my as you put it so succinctly _shitty little flat_ – I’m going _home.”_  
  


“What? Back to _Hyde_?”

He always says it the same way, this time Sam finds he’s had enough.

“Yeah. Yeah you know what, yeah. I’m going back to Hyde. Going home. It’s not that far. Why the fuck not?”

He wonders why he had not thought of it before, wonders what would happen if he just drove out of Manchester, where he might end up, imagines the road fading into mist, getting lost, the world clearing again and finding himself right back here, outside the station, outside the pub, Gene waiting for him arms folded with that intolerable smug look on his face, just having to punch it off him if Gene didn’t punch him first one of them winding up inevitably shoved into an alleyway wall, dealing with an erection he would forevermore deny having, just like every time. He wonders why that doesn’t sound so bad, why so large a part of him prefers it to the idea of actually arriving – where? In actual Hyde? In 2006? _Home?_

“Well I hope you have a right grand time. In Hyde. That’ll be _home_ then will it?”

Why does he do that? Sam flounders, drowning again, it happens so easily. _How_ does he do it? Never mind internalizing the bastard sometimes it’s as though Gene Hunt’s just there, living inside his head, a part of him he can’t cut out without killing himself in the process.

“I don’t know” he hears himself say, his head hurts, he feels furiously as though he might just cry “I don’t _know._ I don’t know any more. There’s nothing and I don’t _know -_ what home is – how to get there – ”

“Oh that’s easy Sammy boy you just tap your heels together three times and say –”

“Fuck _off”_

 _“_ Mmm, naah, pretty sure that wasn’t it.”

“Gene I swear to god –”

His voice wavers, cracks, any minute now he’s gonna get called a fairy, or a faggot, or a flaming queer, he tries to steel himself but the steel doesn’t come, he turns his back on the desk. The words don’t come either. Instead he feels Gene suddenly behind him, a hand on his shoulder that can just _just_ be interpreted as manly and a –

“Get it together Tyler” _you fucking sissy_ – he imagines it, it doesn’t come – “Everyone’s got something, _home_ if you want – his own plot and place, just it’s not always a place.”

He’s right of course, he knows it as he feels himself taking strength from Gene’s bulk, his warmth and solidity, how _real_ he is, the grip – it’s slid to his arm now holding him up making him feel stronger, more here, more present, even protected. His body makes a silent sigh and he is not sure if he leaned back of if Gene pulled him just a little bit closer –

“It’s you” he says, defeated, but it’s a good defeat like a the end of a good fight – “You’ve always felt like home”

“Sam” nothing more than his name, but it’s not an admonishment, it feels like a caress. He reaches for the hand on his shoulder and takes hold and it does not feel as though he drowning any more.

__x__

 

**This was actually the first one I wrote and m first ever LoM fic so apologies if it's a little clunky.**


	4. It’s cold, you should take my jacket.

  1. _It’s cold, you should take my jacket._



How does it come to this? How does it always come to something like this? He isn’t even surprised any more, running through the night time streets in bare feet and pajamas, though ti barely matters – he knows that when he inevitably wakes up from this he’ll be shouting and sweating in his bed with the furious flowers of the wall paper swirling all around him. Some nights he loses track of nightmare and reality, fantasy and dream. He cannot even always remember any more what constitutes what.

But if he runs enough he might get out of it. Like he said to Annie that very first day – his mind can surely only make up so much before – what? Before something really dream like happens as his mind breaks? How would he know? His feet leaving the pavement and not coming back down again, the roads and shops, houses and houses all turning into shoddy sketches of themselves, pencil lines shivering past him onto a white paper horizon. Maybe a musical montage as he runs down street after street, feet numb, tarmac soft, nothing hurting.

He feels hot, sweating in the sheets. Nothing changes, nothing goes back to black and white, the colours don’t fade or change. He runs forever, sides fuzzy, feet numb, unaware of breathing or any rise and fall to his chest. There are clowns in the shadows, dark wings flapping in dead end streets, foul little girls in his flat, in the wires. Oh, there are monsters in the canals with long fingers and demons in all the details.

Details, details. Sand under Annie’s nails, Chris dripping grease onto evidence, Gene bloody Hunt, every particle of him- why would he make any of it up? _You wouldn’t._ Annie’s voice. Annie is his reason, the head he doesn’t have (but not the heart? Oh) The way she walks, the way her hair falls, the rise and fall of her voice, how done she always is with him but how sweetly so. The feel and smell of Gene’s breath near his face, breakfast and whiskey and cigarettes, should be gross but makes something go tight in his chest, the feel of a punch to the gut as something that wakes him up, a twist of the arm that reminds him he’s alive, how he welcomes it and the way it feels good and feels and feels and feels –

Until his head spins but it’s a good spin.

Details. He thinks of all the details, like he always does. All the shit he ~~couldn’t possibly have~~ made up. Details of Gene, details of Annie, her smile, her hand, a firm grasp pulling him back from the edge, so steady, so kind. If he was making it up he surely would have fallen in love with Annie. He should have.

He didn’t.

Fuck.

He thought that. He really had that thought, allowed it to word itself in his head. Fuck it, wasn’t this just a dream? Didn’t matter then. Dreams weren’t the same as fantasies. You loved people you’d never love in dreams, fucked people you’d never think of fucking. If it was just a dream he could love Gene, didn’t matter, not a bit, wasn’t real, la di fucking la.

He stops in the middle of the street, laughing, putting back his head and laughing up at the sky and that swirling starry starry night. He hears himself laugh, laugh like a madman and put his hands over his ears, stopping dead, still silent.

His chest heaves, sides splitting, ribs feeling like they’ve been cracked. The buildings swirl and steady and his feet are cut and bleeding, stinging to fuck. Broken glass on these streets and gravel and everything hurts.

So this is real then, this crazy flight through the streets at night.

He slumps against the wall, dropping heavily, running both hands hard over is face. Hot, wet. Fuck. He needs – he could really stand to see –

“The fuck you doing here Tyler?”

He looks up slowly, thinks he ought to be surprised. He isn’t. He’s run in nothing more than circles all night, coming down like this to rest just behind the station, bricks against his back. The fire and the pounding in his ears are calming down as he finds something to cling to in the storm and he hears his voice say –

“Out for a late night stroll guv – you?”

“A late night sodding stroll?”

“Yeah”

“At four in the morning.”

“Yeah”

“In your bloody PJ’s.”

Sam looks down at himself in mock surprise –

“Yeah. What the hell are you doing?”

“Locking the fuck up Tyler, working til late at night like the upstanding citizen I am – keeping the city safe from nutters.”

“Well you know what they say – no peace for the wicked.”

He wonders briefly why Gene is always there when he needs him, even when he doesn’t know he does. Almost as though there’s a part of Gene that knows, that’s heard a call he forgot making.

“You’re hurt”

He looks at his feet;

“It’s fine.”

“I’ll say this once Sam and forget I did but you need some serious specialist help”

Sam grins weakly,

“Help is for pansies”

Gene grins, drops to the floor beside him, slaps him on the shoulder,

“That’s more like it. C’mon, we’ll get you home.”

“We?”

“Yeah. Shut up. Said I had to keep the streets free from nutters didn’t I?”

“’kay”

He starts to rise, Gene half hauling him, half offering himself as some kind of rock, hand still on the back of his neck, sliding down his back, a rough stroke down his spine that sets every nerve ending twanging and singing, _Jesus._

“Bleeding hell you’re cold”

He can’t imagine how he can be, everything is burning up, his chest, his suddenly blistering feet, the hand at his spine, a different burn, a good one. But yeah, yeah it’s November in the north of England and he’s out on the streets barefoot in PJ’s.

“C’mon, it’s cold, you should take my coat.”

Gene is already shrugging it off.

“ _That_ coat?” Sam cannot resist a raised eyebrow.

“You saying something? This is a bloody great coat, I don’t lend this to every Tom, Dick and crazy gobshite you know.”

“No offence guv but I wouldn’t be seen dead in that coat.”

“Oh yeah cause stripy jim-jams at dawn is a look now is it? Take the coat you sissy bastard.”

“Alright alright, I’ll wear the coat!”

“Good boy. C’mon, back over the rainbow with you.”

 _If only_ he thinks, though it’s more a reflex that anything and he finds himself not feeling it. The coat is too big, he feels wrapped in it like a blanket, an ugly hairy blanket that smells like Gene. This should probably disgust him but disgust is not on the list of many and vivid feeling he seems to be feeling – happiness, warmth, cold, pain, love, confusion and so many more, dashing against the inside of his skull like fireworks.

He wraps himself up tighter in the coat, surreptitiously snigging the collar and he wonders if he dares ask Gene to stay when they get back. He thinks he could sleep if he was there and not have to run again. He can’t. Can’t ask that. Not yet.

In the end, he does not need to.

__x__


	5. Going Somewhere?

**Note: Ok so i went weird on this one and actually took some “Ashes to Ashes” shit into account. So this is based on a weird little head canon I came up with the other day and made myself sad with involving a kind of archangel!Gene and Gatekeeper!Nelson. Make of it what you will! it's set very shortly the after the end of season 2.**

 

 

_Going Somewhere_

 

“Going somewhere mon brave?”

He sways in the doorway on the verge of following Sam out, the last two in the pub, smiling and glowing gently in the knowledge of all being well now. He opens his mouth to say _Yeah, home it’s well past closing_ and it does feel more as though he is going home than ever though they haven’t even decided whose place it is to be yet but the words die on his lips as the door swings closed in his face and the world cracks open, all the light breaking through. The pub shudders with light, the walls swelling and shaking and in that split second he _remembers_ and he knows and it splits his head like the light splits the room and he sinks onto the floor holding his head, gripping his human skull with the screech of it. Blinding gold in here and a thrumming as of a thousand harps being strummed together, deafening and awful and a beating all around the rooms as of a thousand wings, wind and heavy feathers pounding around his head.

Yes, he remembers, yes it is like this every time.

“Never get used to it though do you guv?”

He looks up slowly, pushing his hands back through his hair, holding his hand in two hands laced around behind his ears, peering up at Nelson who is not Nelson any more, but then again he never was. A part of him knows this, always knows this, not just when the world breaks open but all the time, a part of him he keeps well down.

“Fuck” he says, squeezing his eyes tight shut against the glare of the light, but it’s not just the light that makes his brain clench and throb, it’s the knowledge, it really is everything.

“He came back” He says slowly, standing up slowly, muscles aching, flexing his back and shoulders under the heavy invisible weight, hearing and feeling that rustle of feathers – “He came back for _me”_

He can feel it, just for a moment, that sheer joy of choosing, of free falling, leaping into the blue and for a moment it feels like flying and he thinks it’s his own, this memory but it’s not, it’s Sam’s and it’s better, better than flying, the greatest feeling in the world, coming home.

“He should never have come here so soon –”

“Don’t” he cuts Nelson off before he can say his name.

“It’s Gene Hunt to you.”

“Now we both know that’s not true.”

“Guv then. Drop it.”

“He wasn’t dead Gene” Nelson inclines his head just a fraction in acknowledgement – “He should never have shown up when he did, powers that be won’t even let me know why, but now –”

“No” panic rising, such a very human panic, ice cold dread in a room full of warm gold where nothing should hurt – “No you can’t have him, not yet, it’s not –” Gene Hunt would never say _it’s not fair_ he realizes it just before he says it, but it doesn’t matter here, none of that matters, none of the façade however thick, however much it has become him, or he has become it.

“It’s not fair” he says “It’s too soon”

“Not for you to decide guv, or me. Besides the gates haven’t opened for him today –”

Gene frowns, not ready for what he is about to hear –

“It’s time for you.”

“What?”

“Isn’t this what you’ve asked for? Every time? When it’s your turn to move on? Well it is” Nelson grins – “Now. Like you wanted.”

“Like I –” he remembers, thinks of it, the sweet sweet thought of going home, moving on like he’s seen so many come and go, ushering them into the pub, to nelson at the gates, he wonders if this was what it was like for Sam and the life he left behind – “And Sam?”

“You were right. It’s too soon. It’s for you this time, just you.”

He can barely believe what he says next though there is no question, no moment in which he thinks of not saying it.

“No”

“No?”

“You heard me”

“You can’t say _no”_

“And I’m pretty bloody sure I just did.”

“This is what you’ve been waiting for! What you asked for every time, all this time! You can’t just turn them down!”

“Oh I can turn them down, and I can tell them to stuff it while I’m at it.”

“You don’t know who you’re talking about – this – this place has messed your head man – you can’t – you know you might never get the chance again – you wanna stay here forever?”

“Fine.”

“Look – pal –” Nelson’s voice softens almost in sympathy – “There’s no happy ending here. You can’t marry the guy, not for another thirty years and –”

“And _what?”_

“And Sam Tyler’s only gonna be here for another seven – you gonna give up an eternity beyond for seven half good years here?”

“Did I fucking stutter? Yeah, that’s what I’m gonna do.”

“You know when those years are up you’ll just be hanging round – waiting – doing what you do, alone, they’ll be pissed at you for this, there’s no guarantee they’ll ever offer again. It’s a long wait my friend, a long wait.”

Nelson looks away just long enough for Gene to raise an eyebrow, he’s quicker in this place, this plane, and always painfully sober.

“Who’d you do it for?” he murmurs. Under the glow of other worldly light Nelson starts cleaning down the bar to look away.

“Was it worth it?”

“I ain’t influencing your choice friend.”

“Was it worth it?”

“Yes” Nelson looks up briefly, looks away again – “And no”

“But mostly?”

“Mostly yes.”

Gene nods, leans across the bar so that Nelson cannot look away -

“He came back for _me”_ he says again – “He died _for me._ You think I’ll leave him now you don’t know Gene Bloody Hunt.”

Nelson sighs. Beneath the strumming and the throbbing the constant _whumpwhumpwhump_ echoing through the place as though the roof vaults up to heaven and it does they can hear a faint pounding from outside where the door should be. This does not happen here.

“It’ your funeral”

“Very fucking funny. Do it. Whatever it is that you do.”

Nelson nods and the lights begin to fade, the sounds from beyond receding into the late night hum of a bulb and the gentle chatter of the streets beyond the windows and a banging at the door and a shout for them to open up and the door falls open and Sam half falls in –

“God’s sake guv how much did you have? You forget the way out the door?”

Gene frowns, aware of a brief feeling of confusion, of missing time perhaps, nothing more than a few drinks would explain but he feels light, happy, bewilderingly so, and a cool breeze follows Sam in through the door, tugging them out towards the streets and the possibilities therein.

“Must’ve done Sammy boy, must’ve done, lead on.”

“Are you two gonna clutter up my pub all night or what?” Nelson’s voice, loud and resonant, the familiar twang that lulls them all – “Go on the pair of you!”

They laugh as he chucks them out and argue as who’s to go to.

And much later in the night when he is too happy to bear it and too much in love not to fear it he will turn to Sam and say _what do I do Sam, tell me what to do_ and Sam, remembering something a friend said to him not long ago will smile and say _stay_ and Gene will nod, smiling and know that this means so much more than just tonight and just Sam’s flat but he will never quite be able to remember why.

__x__


	6. I Can't Sleep, can I stay here?

 

**I can’t sleep, can I stay here?**

_I can’t sleep,_ he thinks, not _I can’t get to sleep,_ because he could fall asleep easily; he can feel it and it is terrifying, he starts to sweat at the thought now that it’s crossed his mind for the thousandth time that night, again and again, _I can’t sleep I can’t sleep, I mustn’t sleep I won’t sleep I will not go to sleep._ Because once lodged, the thought wouldn’t shake; he dragged himself out of a near doze with the spine-shaking, ice-water thought: _If I fall asleep in ’73 I’ll die in 2006._ He doesn’t know why, he _knows_ on some logical level that he’s slept here before (hasn’t he? I mean, does he know _anything_ about what he’s done and hasn’t done here since it’s all a dream anyway- isn’t it?) but that’s it, once there it won’t go and he’s walking exhausted, making himself not sleep. It’s been – he’s lost it – he doesn’t know – some time now, such a long, long time that he’s ma-naged and fought and won and managed to stay awake.

Awake and awake and it sounds like quake and break and shake and he’s shaking and breaking and laughing at the walls because they will keep doing such funny things and it frightens him freezingly when he hears himself laugh, because it sounds like a mad person laughing, and he’s not, is he. _Out of my mind,_ he thinks, and what does that mean anyway? How can you be Out Of your own Mind? Isn’t that where you live? It’s not a house you can just walk out the door, so why do people say it so easily – out of my mind, goodbye, I just left my mind and now I’m where? What? A figment of someone else’s dream? Who would dream him? How could someone else’s dream have coherent thought? Is this what he’s having? Coherent thought? It’s getting away from him, but he tries to follow it through. Out of my mind. Cannot be out of my mind, nobody can. But we think the phrase- why? Is it because to acknowledge that we are in our mind when it’s behaving so oddly is to deal with the fact that we’re living in a scary place? We don’t want that. The inside of the mind should be familiar, say, like your corner of the sofa and a soft blanket, cup of tea, familiar shows on TV and walls (still ones, not moving, bulging, breathing) curtains and windows in all the right places. Not like somebody’s come in and moved everything around and turned the familiar things into horror parodies of itself; you wouldn’t want to see that, couldn’t see that, couldn’t settle down on that sofa with everything around you different and wrong. You’d have to leave the room until somebody fixed it back – go _Out_ of your _Mind’s_ front room until somebody fixes it back. Who’s going to fix it? What if it never gets fixed?  Still better to stay out in the unknown than in the unknown.

Who’s going to fix it?

He is. He’s just not going to fall asleep. That fixes things. He can control this; he can control anything. Rearrange that room himself and get back in it, change the curtains, the wallpaper, the fucking bed, _fuck_ the bed, he’s kneeling on the floor gripping it, banging his head against the edge of the bed, fuck it to hell and its ugly ass. _You’re not getting me, bed! You’re not getting me to lie down in you and die! No fuck this, I’m gonna live, I’m gonna live._

 Yelling wordlessly, face aching from the tearing of his mouth in that scream, and then- ­ _I have to get out of here!_

But where does he go? There’s nowhere, but he gets dressed, he washes – not in that order, he thinks- he hopes- he got it right, and he walks out (out of my mind, now where?)

“The hell you doing here, Tyler?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” he looks around. Work. He came to work. He wishes he were more surprised. He’s not. That Gene is still there in an otherwise empty office is the only thing that surprises him.

“Can I stay – here, I mean? For a while? You busy? I can help.”

Gene snorts, pulls up a chair, twitches an eyebrow at the way Sam half falls into it.

“You don’t look like you could help Ray find the nearest boozer.”

“I’m good – I can –” he pulls the chair and himself up to the desk – drags them, more, starts touching pens, paper, not seeing. Gene makes a noise and walks out, comes back two minutes later and shoves a coffee in front of him.

“Drink it and shut up, cause Gene Hunt doesn’t bring people coffee, he gets supplied with coffee – and biscuits –“” he bangs a packet down on the desk. “Bourbon?”

The packet comes easily in the range of Sam’s floundering, questing hands. He can’t remember when he last ate. Not helpful really.

“Now I’ll ask you again – why are here?”

“I told you – I can’t sleep.”

“There’s pills for that.”

“I can’t –”

“There’s whisky for that.”

“No, I –”

Gene sighs minutely and reaches for the bottle in the desk. It crosses Sam’s shattered brain – it actually never did before when he was saner – that Gene doesn’t offer people his whisky – not other people, not ever. He wonders if it means something. Right now everything _has_ to mean something.

“No, you don’t understand –” he pushes the bottle back, not ungently, across the desk – “I _can’t_ sleep. If I fall asleep I’ll die.”

Gene blinks at him once, slowly.

“Oh well, that’s clear as bloody crystal now. Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

“I was –” Sam stops, wondering when he got too tired to read sarcasm. Gene shakes his head at him.

“There has to be something you can give me to do.”

Gene stares at him for a long beat as though deciding things.

“Yeah,” he says finally – “Quite frankly all this filing business is dull as shit- you can help, dunno if it’ll keep you awake though.”

“Anything.” He realizes he sounds quite pathetically grateful, if he was less tired he might have cared. Ten minutes finds them both kneeling on the floor with the contents of Gene’s filing cabinets fanned around them and, as Gene had said, in a fantastic state of disarray. After a couple of hours Sam leans back, a thought sneaking up on him –

“Why were _you_ here?” he asks.

The twist to Gene’s mouth hides three days of knowledge of how tired Sam has been, how closely he has observed him starting to crack, how he has stayed up here every night since he saw this coming, knowing that he would be here sooner or later in this state with this request.

“You think I’m gonna let the fellas see me doing poncey boring tasks like this? You really think that’s the image The Gene Genie needs? Now shut up and don’t tell.”

Later it will occur to him, just as it will occur to him that Gene made the entire filing task up on the spot, that he would rather make up a story that would damage his reputation than admit to him he had been waiting. Right now he just sits back on his heels for a moment, wondering if he can’t stop swaying or the floor.

“You need to sit back down?”

“Yeah…yeah maybe.”

“How long has it been?”

“What?”

“Since you last slept- how long has it been?”

Sam thinks – he could not even remember before –

“Four days – five?”

“Bloody hell Tyler. I’m not your mum but you really should –”

“Can’t –” Sam yawns – when did he last let himself yawn? It is almost relief – “Told you I’ll….” He uses Gene to haul himself up, clutching onto his shirt as though falling. He feels like he could fall at any moment, only this clutching keeping him from going down, down, down and the floor taking him, eating him up like the bed and killing him.

“You just sit there a moment Gladys, I’ll finish this.”

It’s the last thing Sam hears before he goes.

He wakes up suddenly, briefly terrified before realising- _I did it! I woke up! And I’m not dead? Am I?_ He clutches himself. Still here. Not nothing. Not dead. Still here. And he’s warm and feels safe and something rough and scratchy but nice in his face, the collar of a coat he never remembered being put over him (so gently, he knows somehow it was so gentle, anyway he never woke). But he woke up, he fell asleep and he woke up and he didn’t die. He grins slowly, relief spreading from ear to ear _I didn’t die! I can sleep again!_ A watch left on the desk tells him it’s morning. Not his watch. He looks around.

“Morning, sunshine.” Gene comes in, bearing coffee – “Don’t get used to it.”

“Fine. I’m really quite – great actually.”

“Didn’t ask, Sam, but thanks for that.”

Sam frowns, he feels sure Gene had asked- but he hadn’t, it was true; he never would, not in words. He stretches, starts to push off the coat –

“I think this is, er –” he begins proffering it awkwardly.

“Stand’s behind you.”

“Were you –” Sam frowns, wondering if Gene was here all night, his mind catching up fast to the implications if he has been

“What?”

“Nothing. Breakfast?”

It occurs to him as he heads for the canteen that he knows the answer. He would never have slept, let alone so peacefully, if he had not felt safe, protected. He does not remember even before all this when he ever slept so well.

Like there were angels watching over him.

__x__


End file.
